Tag: economy

Net Zero Will Boost the Economy? Pull the Other One

According to a recent Bloomberg article, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has urged the next Government to “put Net Zero at the heart of its economic plans” in order to achieve a “£57 billion economic boost by going green”. The article draws from a recent speech by CBI Chief Exec Rain Newton-Smith, in which she argued that “the next Government can’t be pro-growth and deliver for our people, planet and communities, without being pro-green”. This claim is in turn based on an analysis from CBI Economics, “which found that the U.K.’s Net Zero sector grew by 9% in 2023, a year when the U.K. economy fell into technical recession”.

If it is true, it is remarkable, surely, that a sector of the U.K. economy could grow at such a rate, despite headwinds. And it would indeed be an extremely foolish Government that ignored such a stark metric. But the CBI has form in making big statements about the direction that U.K. Governments should take, including most famously an injunction that Britain should ditch the pound and join the Eurozone – a policy position which Vote Leave later revealed likely to be related to the fact that “12% of the CBI’s retained income” came from the European Commission. “Since 2009, the CBI has received £7,031,797 from 140 taxpayer-funded public sector bodies in membership fees,” explained Vote Leave in 2015. Might funding sources also explain its arguments for a doubling down on Net Zero policy?

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California Reveals All Job Gains In 2023 Were Fake

In the past year we have discussed on multiple occasions that US labor market data has been repeatedly doctored to artificially appear better than it really is (see “Here Is The “Unexpected” Reason Why The Fed Will Rush To Cut Rates As Soon As Possible“, “Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000” and “Here Comes The Job Shock: Philadelphia Fed Admits US Jobs “Overstated” By At Least 1.1 Million“), although thanks to a quirk of BLS data revision reporting, we won’t have definitive proof of just how ugly the real job market has been in recent years until some time in 2025, well into Trump’s second administration.

However, while the BLS will be able to maintain the facade of “strong job gains” lies into early 2025, the dismal reality has already made an appearance in America’s largest labor market.

According to the latest report published by the non-partisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) which is an agency of the California government, is overseen by the Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the California State Legislature, and performs and publishes extensive analyses of the state’s budget in addition to providing fiscal and policy advice to the California Legislature, contrary to prior reports of over substantial job gains in the deep blue state in 2023, the reality was far uglier.

In a report titled “Newest Early Jobs Revision Shows No Net Job Growth During 2023” we learn just that: the Early Revisions to state-level data flagged here previously, suggests that California actually lost jobs during the fourth quarter of last year. As the report details, “based on the most recent release of the early benchmarks, payroll jobs declined by 32,000 from September 2023 through December 2023. On the contrary, the preliminary monthly reports showed a solid increase in job growth (+117,000 jobs) at the time.”

This, according to the LAO, means that “with the fourth quarter revision, calendar year 2023 saw essentially no net job growth (+9,000 jobs overall).“

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Bidenomics and California’s $20 Minimum Wage Force San Francisco McDonald’s to Close After 30 Years

The McDonald’s at Stonestown Galleria in San Francisco announced it will shut its doors permanently.

After serving the community for more than three decades, this fast-food staple cites the crushing combination of high operational costs and recent legislative changes as the primary reasons for its closure.

The franchisee owner, Scott Rodrick, confirmed the closure in a statement to ABC7’s Dion Lim.

According to Rodrick, the closure is due to two main reasons: an uncompromising landlord who refused to negotiate a “sensible” rent, and the sky-high property taxes and mall fees, which were reportedly the highest paid for any single location within the company.

Rodrick also pointed out that conducting business in California had become increasingly challenging, especially with the state’s new minimum wage for fast-food workers. He described this as a “gut-wrenching” day for his family.

A notice posted on its door reads:

Dear McDonald’s Customer,

On June 23, 2024, this restaurant (255 Winston Drive at Stonestown Galleria) will be permanently closing. It has been a pleasure for my entire team and I to serve the 19th Avenue and Ingleside neighborhoods for more than 30 years. We are thankful to have been a part of your daily meal routine, either for an Egg McMuffin in the morning or a Happy Meal with the kids after an afternoon of shopping at Stonestown.

All of our valued team members have been offered opportunities to continue working with my restaurant company at other nearby McDonald’s. We hope that you will continue to visit us at our other neighboring McDonald’s restaurants. Or you can have your favorite McDonald’s meal delivered to you via our digital app.

The fast food chain is the latest casualty of Bidenomics and Governor Newsom’s $20 minimum wage law.

Last week, one of Hollywood’s most iconic restaurants, Arby’s Roast Beef, closed after an impressive 55 years in business.

Gary Husch, Leviton’s son-in-law and the general manager of the establishment, echoed these sentiments. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Husch emphasized that the combined effects of inflation, the pandemic’s impact on foot traffic, and the draconian wage increase directly led to their difficult decision.

“With inflation, food costs have skyrocketed and the $20-an-hour minimum wage has been the final nail in the coffin,” Husch said.

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Here’s Why the World is Falling Apart (and What You Can Do About It!)

Do you ever get the feeling that everything is breaking down all at once?

Forget about starting a family or buying a house. It’s becoming harder and harder for young men and women just to put food on the table.

And those lucky ones who defy the odds and manage to start a family sure aren’t spending their time at neighbourhood barbecues while the kids play a game of pick-up street hockey. Today, they’d be lucky to pry the kids away from their device long enough for them to notice that there are other kids in their neighbourhood. Not that the parents are any better at living life.

What’s everyone doing on those devices? Scrolling through their never-ending social media feeds of doom porn and ragebait, of course! They’re busy watching Israel holocaust Palestine and NATO inch closer to nuclear war with Russia and people at home engaging in public freakouts as society disintegrates and the world devolves into madness.

That faith in the ability of hard work and determination to help us all improve the planet and leave a better place for our children? Gone. Replaced by a sinking feeling that the world is heading to hell in a handbasket and that maybe it isn’t worth saving anyway.

Yes, from the macrocosm of geopolitical crises and financial trickery to the microcosm of economic disintegration and spiritual malaise, it seems like everything that could go wrong is going wrong. Increasingly, it feels like we’re just bystanders watching the messy spectacle play out on our screens, digital drivers rubbernecking at the car crash of chaos unfolding on the information superhighway.

But did you know that there’s a name for this phenomenon? And that it’s part of a years-long plan by the powers-that-shouldn’t-be to destabilize the world and move their agenda forward? And did you also know that by merely watching this disaster taking place, we’re actually helping that plan along?

No? Well, you’re about to learn all about it! Let’s dig in.

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Is the Reign of the Dollar Coming to an End?

In early June, a rumour began to circulate – which was widely reported in the Indian press as true – that the government of Saudi Arabia had allowed its petrodollar agreement with the United States to lapse. This agreement, made in 1974, is quite straight-forward and fulfils various needs of the US government: the US purchases oil from Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia uses that money to buy military equipment from US arms manufacturers while holding the income from the oil sales in US Treasury Bills and in the Western financial system. This arrangement to recycle oil profits into the US economy and the Western banking world is known as the petrodollar system.

This non-exclusive arrangement between the two countries never required the Saudis to limit their oil sales to dollars or to recycle their oil profits exclusively in US Treasury Bills (of which it holds a considerable $135.9 billion) and Western banks. Indeed, the Saudis are free to sell oil in multiple currencies, such as the Euro, and participate in digital currency platforms such as mBridge, a trial initiative of the Bank of International Settlements and the central banks of China, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Nonetheless, the rumour that this decades-long petrodollar agreement had come to an end reflects the widespread expectation that a seismic shift in the financial system will overturn the rule of the Dollar-Wall Street regime. It was a false rumour, but it carried within it a truth about the possibilities of a post-dollar or de-dollarised world.

The invitation extended to six countries to join the BRICS bloc last August was a further indication that such a shift is underway. Among these countries are Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, although Saudi Arabia has yet to finalise its membership. With its expanded membership, BRICS would include the two countries with the largest and second largest gas reserves in the world (Russia and Iran, respectively) and the two countries that accounted for nearly a quarter of global oil production (Russia and Saudi Arabia, all figures as of 2022). The political opening between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by Beijing in March 2023, as well as the signs that the US allies UAE and Saudi Arabia seek to diversify their political linkages, demonstrate the possible end of the petrodollar system. That was at the heart of the rumour in early June.

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The Achilles Heel Of The Fiat Money System

The fiat money system will not disappear just like that. Any expectations or hopes to that end should be tempered. Yes, the fiat money system could collapse; yet there is a significant likelihood it will persist longer than most people might think. This prolonged existence may come at a cost: a fascist state encroachment on the freedoms of citizens and entrepreneurs would be more profound than most people realize.

Much ink has been spilt about the impending collapse of the international fiat money system. It is a debate that naturally gains momentum in times of crisis—as witnessed in the aftermath of the 2008/9 global financial market debacle or the politically dictated global lockdown crash of 2020/21.

At the same time, however, it is entirely justified to harbor significant concerns regarding the fiat money system. After all, it is plagued by blatant economic and ethical defects.

Are you wondering about the essence of fiat money? Let’s break it down into three characteristics:

  • State-sponsored central banks wield a monopoly over the production of fiat central bank money. Upon obtaining fiat central bank money, commercial banks are allowed to generate their own money, known as fiat commercial bank money.
  • Fiat money is typically created through lending without the backing of real savings. It is essentially created out of thin air (or ex nihilo, as it is called in Latin).
  • Fiat money predominantly exists in dematerialized form. While it may manifest as colorful printed pieces of paper, its primary existence resides in digital entries on computer systems, represented by bits and bytes.

Whether we’re talking about the United States dollar, euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, British pound, or Swiss franc, they are all fiat money. We know from monetary theory that fiat money is not “natural” or “innocent.” Unlike moneys emerging from voluntary agreements in the free marketplace, fiat money was introduced through state intervention—involving coercion and violence—leading to many negative effects.

Fiat money is inherently inflationary, gradually losing its purchasing power over time. This phenomenon disproportionately benefits a select few at the expense of the broader population.

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On Wealth Inequality, the Left Has a Point

The federal government has been waging a war against the middle class and working poor since at least 1970. Wealth inequality has steadily increased since the early 1970s, and it’s not a coincidence. It’s a result of a series of policies. The government wants the masses of American working people broke, propertyless, and dependent upon elected officials for the crumbs they give back as handouts from taxes taken.

The most insidious attack on working people has been inflation, which really took off when the federal government decoupled the dollar from gold in 1971.

The inflation tax is the most regressive tax that currently exists in federal policy.

Inflation always taxes wages twice, once when the labor is performed and the worker is awaiting payment, and again when the wages are deposited into the worker’s checking account. But inflation leaves the rich man’s yacht untaxed.

No level of inflation, no matter how high, can ever take one cent of value away from a yacht. A yacht is always going to be a yacht, no matter what the value of money is.

Inflation taxes the poor man’s rent he advances to his landlord, but leaves private jets and vacation homes untaxed.

Want to know where this inflation tax goes? The stolen value of the inflation tax doesn’t just vanish out of thin air.

Some of it goes to the government; economists even have a name for the benefit government draws from the inflation tax. It’s called “seigniorage.”

Rich people generally don’t pay the inflation tax, and many of them benefit from it. Let’s say you’re a billionaire real estate mogul, not unlike Donald Trump, with a net-worth of $1 billion. You buy houses and real estate, and when you get your 20% equity, you pull that equity out and invest it into another real estate holding. So you have properties worth $5 billion, net assets of $1 billion, and (with only 20% equity in your properties) you also have $4 billion in mortgage debt.

4% inflation lowers the value of the mortgage debt you owe, since with CPI inflation you’re just going to raise the rent 4% next year. Inflation created by the Federal Reserve Bank becomes a gift of $160 million annually to your net worth ($4 billion x 0.04).

Every year.

And it enriches them more if inflation exceeds 4%, as it has in recent years.

If the CPI is 10% (as it nearly was in 2022), inflation alone adds 40% ($400 million) to this real estate mogul’s net worth. That doesn’t count the decrease in the nominal debt paid off by the real estate mogul’s tenants.

And this assumes the value of his property holdings is only increasing at the rate of CPI inflation, which it’s vastly exceeding, thanks to Federal Reserve Bank interest rate manipulation and federal housing subsidies and incentives.

Inflation enriches the real estate mogul with a boatload of mortgages that are now easier to pay off. It also benefits the hedge fund speculator and the banker, who are in the very businesses of being in debt.

In other words, the inflation tax makes the value of money flow directly from the wallets of wage-earners to the vaults of rich people who work with debt.

As long as the working man holds money in his possession, whether in the form of credit to his employer for his labor, in his pocket, or in his checking account, inflation taxes him. Only when the money is finally no longer due to him does the inflation tax end.

Working people know this truth intuitively because inflation raises prices at the grocery store, at the hardware store, at the department store, and the price of real estate.

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27% of Americans Are Skipping Meals Because of Skyrocketing Food Costs, Survey Shows

The price of food has jumped by 25% since the start of the pandemic — even more if you factor in the cost of a quick trip to the store, which takes into consideration the price of fuel. Now, a new study says there are some major ramifications.

Intuit Credit Karma, which provides information about financial products, says that more than one-quarter of the people it surveyed said they have skipped meals or sacrificed other spending due to rising costs. The survey of 2,011 adults was conducted online in the United States during the week of May 7. 

According to the survey, 28% said they are putting off paying for necessities, such as rent or other bills, to afford groceries — while 27% say they are occasionally skipping meals. Another 18% have applied for or have considered applying for food stamps and other types of assistance, and 15% rely on or have considered visiting food banks for their groceries.

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California Restaurants Have Slashed 10,000 Jobs Since Democrats Introduced $20 Minimum Wage

Restaurants across the state of California have cut at least 10,000 jobs since Democrat lawmakers mandated a $20 minimum wage, according to a major trade group.

According to the California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA), thousands of restaurant workers have lost their positions as businesses are forced to cut labor costs and raise their prices in order to survive.

The New York Post reports:

The California Business and Industrial Alliance (CABIA) slammed  Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for pushing through the law, which went into effect April 1 – and was blamed for forcing one beloved taco chain to shutter 48 locations in the state last week.

“California businesses have been under total attack and total assault for years,” CABIA president and founder Tom Manzo told Fox Business. “It’s just another law that puts businesses in further jeopardy.”

Several major chains – including McDonald’s, Burger King, and even low-cost favorite In-N-Out Burger – jacked up prices to offset the higher wages. Many had to cut employee hours and some have expedited a move to automation.

Manzo said nearly 10,000 jobs have been cut across fast food restaurants since Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 1287 into law last year, adding that officials were living in a “fantasyland” by thinking that drastic wage increases will help workers or businesses.

Just this week, the beloved restaurant chain Rubio’s Coastal Grill, announced that it would be closing 48 locations statewide due to the unaffordable costs of doing business.

“The closings were brought about by the rising cost of doing business in California,” said a statement from a Rubio’s spokesperson. “While painful, the store closures are a necessary step in our strategic long-term plan to position Rubio’s for success for years to come.”

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Wall Street Admits The Biggest Economic Shocker: All Jobs In The Past Year Have Gone To Illegal Aliens

For much of the past year we had been pounding the table on two very simple facts:  not only has the US labor market been appallingly weak, with most of the jobs “gained” in 2023 and meant to signal how strong the Biden “recovery” has been, about to be revised away (as first the Philly Fed and now Bloomberg both admit), but more shockingly, all the job growth in the past few years has gone to illegal aliens.

We first pointed this out more than a year ago, and since then we have routinely repeated – again, again, and again – yet even though we made it abundantly clear what was happening…… going so far as to point out the specific immigration loophole illegals were using to work in the US for up to 5 years…… and even fact-checking the senile, ballot-harvesting White House occupant on multiple occasions…

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